Page 10 of Summer Light on Nantucket

“Me either!” Blythe said, which didn’t really make sense, and they laughed at that.

Blythe’s grandmother had told her over and over, “Be sure to marry a man who makes you laugh.”

After a while, Bob helped Blythe up. The party house was in darkness now. Everyone had left while they were kissing in the hammock.

“We closed down the party,” Blythe said.

“Nowthat’sspecial,” Bob said.

They walked to their Ubers and agreed to meet for lunch that afternoon. Blythe knew she wasn’t in love with him, and he wasn’t in love with her. They knew they were both rebound cases, but she felt less heartbroken and abandoned, and he was, really, a good guy.

They dated all that summer, meeting in Bob’s apartment or at restaurants or pubs to share all the events of their day. They became lovers. Bob wasn’t as romantic as Aaden had been, but he was more protective. Less dramatic, more tender. Less interested in poetry, more capable of reading the small print in documents. He took her arm when they crossed the street. When they walked down a sidewalk in Boston, he made sure to be on the outside, closer to the curb, so she’d never be spattered by a car passing in the rain. He never left her alone when they went to a cocktail party where she was a stranger. When she had her period, he brought her boxes of expensive chocolates and watched any Hallmark movie she chose, even though the movies often made her cry. He understood the boundaries and laws of the real world.

When Blythe was with Bob, she felt safe. She felt loved. There was no crazy, compelling energy between them, no blazing candle that would soon burn out. This love was different from what she felt for Aaden. Aaden’s love had been like lightning. Bob’s love was like the sun. She flourished in his love, and he flourished in hers.

After they’d been together a year, Bob proposed. They were on Nantucket, living with his father and mother in their enormous brick house on Fair Street, and they’d taken a picnic basket with them and beach towels and walked along Surfside Beach until they found aprivate spot. They tossed down the blanket, holding it in place with the basket and cooler.

“Why is the cooler so heavy?” she asked.

Bob opened it and brought out a bottle of champagne. “Probably because I brought this.”

“Why?” she asked. It was late morning, and the sun was high and hot, but a salty breeze rippled over them. She was wondering whether she should put on her straw sun hat.

“Because I brought this,” Bob said. And he held out a velvet box.

Blythe gasped. She didn’t take the box right away but studied the man holding it. Her teddy bear, she often called him in bed, because he had a hairy chest and loved to snuggle with her. He never called her pet names, notdarlingordearorhoneybun,and she knew he never would. She had asked him one day, kiddingly, if for her next birthday he would bungee jump with her in Colorado. He’d considered this and told her that he’d do many things for her, but not bungee jumping. That was too extreme an experience for a thrill. She’d known right then that she loved this man, that they could make a good life together, that he would never ignore her, like her father did, or leave her, like Aaden had.

“Go on,” she’d said that morning at the beach, “you have to say it.”

Bob had looked so happy. “Blythe, will you marry me?”

She laughed and cried a little when she said, “Bob, I will.”

He put the exquisite oval cut diamond on her finger.

“It fits perfectly!” She was truly surprised.

Almost bashfully, Bob admitted, “I took your turquoise ring to the jewelers to be sure it was the right size.”

“Of course you did,” Blythe said, and threw herself against him with such emotion they both fell backward on the towel. Bob was surprised when she lunged at him, and Blythe loved him even more because he’d been surprised.

relative love

Blythe took Bob to dinner with her parents, first making him promise he would not run screaming from the table after he met them.

It was a pleasant, bland occasion. Blythe told them she and Bob were engaged to be married. Her parents replied that they were finally moving to Arizona. They had already had movers pack everything Blythe had left in her room into boxes that were taken to a storage facility. They gave Blythe the keys.

As they pulled away from the house, Blythe said to Bob, “That was very ‘Thanks for coming don’t let the door hit you on your way out.’ ”

Bob had stopped the car at the curb and reached over to take Blythe in his arms. “I’ll give you a home and I’ll never kick you out.”

Blythe didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so she did both.

“I love that I can trust you,” she said, hugging him tight.

Back when they were spending their first spring together, they hadgone to Nantucket and stayed at Blythe’s grandmother’s house. Now it was Blythe’s house.

That weekend, it had rained, a thunderous soaking daylong deluge of rain, which made sleeping late in a bed with warm blankets especially enjoyable. When they finally rose, they made strong coffee with the sugar and cream Blythe had brought over with a bag of necessary groceries. Mugs in hand, they toured the house. Blythe was slightly embarrassed because the house was so old and eccentric. Some of the bedroom and bathroom doors locked with knob locks, some with ancient hook and eyes, some with small wedges of wood that could be turned to press against the doorjambs. In several rooms and in the kitchen, drawers in dressers or cupboards had become swollen shut from the island’s humidity and couldn’t be opened or could only be shut partway, with some of the drawers sticking out to catch you on the leg at night. The wallpaper in the master bedroom was probably seventy years old and ugly, great swoops of blue flowers tied with extravagant pink ribbons.

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